The first collaboration between tattooist and illustrator Loren Fetterman and performance artist Stefanie Elrick. Merging tattooing, body art, poetry, calligraphy and photography in a dynamic new piece of work.

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Stage 2 :: First Drafts

The following verses were created using fragments of the writing submitted by the public. They are not connected necessarily and will be edited down even further, eventually becoming one narrative.

Verse 1 – Untitled – (Stef)

We all want love in a sea of sighs, whispering to the moon we saw you dancing too, fire fire burning bright, all it takes is two people rubbing together. How long can stars shine for a blind man? Always. And so I turned from you as ripe, young flesh passes through your fingertips like water off a ducks back; did you hear that? Shimmering, gliding in the night, they come into your room, in your mind they spill surprises unfurl their cinematic wings, take flight to haunt and guide us. They sow the seeds of contemplation, they are the box you can’t escape from “No” you say. I wonder if you actually are asleep, or if you are stealing the same moment I am. Let him fall and don’t deny the tragic, magic hour. A wound of such will stay unseen just like its consequence for every feelings been a thought beyond parole. Life’s boundary to discover a confidence destroyed. A fitful vision of love in bloom, at night this ghost slips in your room a secret laid bare at a terrible cost, let him fall just a little speck of might in a white hot fantasy. You can come off that horse now, riding it like pornography. A pound of flesh paid, is not ever enough. This Romantic shuddering now in a brighter place, the site of my earliest adolescent longings lies demolished, reduced to horizontality.

Verse 2 – Untitled – (Loren)

I breathe in unison with you. And we’d sleep through the night. I’d lie there with you in the dark depths and alone, I can’t dream without you being there. Why can’t I be alone? In the darkness, where our world stretches no further than to the tips of our duvet that’s draped over our bodies; echoes in a storm, a careful wave, dangerous, mysterious in the shadows of beginnings and ends. I knew it never could turn out the way we’d planned it. I allow my mind to follow the rhythm, I allow the colours behind my eyelids to begin to wash back and fourth like a gentle tide, in time with us. We could be floating now, on waters so still that the only movement on its surface is created by our chest rising and falling in time. Do you dream of me?

Verse 3 – Untitled – (Stef)

I want you to think about love. Cling tight to this little hope as it’s all there’s left to feel, a centre to the frenzy in an world of unending unreal. Frogs can fly when you don’t make them feel self-conscious about it. We’d not know what was true but dreaming the same dream I’m quick and bright, a flush, a dot of silver in the warm blue of the suns diffusion. Come night, we’ll dance to our tune among paper stars. Forever. A mystery invites investigation. For this lifetime leaves us apart but know this lifetime I love you. I want you to think about that.

Verse 4 – Untitled – (Loren)

I found myself mesmerised by words. Everywhere I looked there were words – on hoardings, buses, on packets in supermarkets, on people’s skin. I became confused about what I was reading and why. I no longer remember all of it, or what I had read during the night before. It no longer made sense either. The ingredients of a cornflake packet were as significant as a religious tract; a God for faith or false creation of man random thoughts suppressed to conform I saw the world through a changing light entranced to escapism a thunderous bass I hear a quiet beat in my mind, our bodies sway to it, the beat of our breath. I’m interrupted by a though of what is to come, and I fall out of time with you. The beat stops and our floating bodies sink beneath waves. Your music ended too soon and that was when I realised the word of God was just meaningless scribbles.

Verse 5 – Untitled – (Stef)

Walk away and tell me that’s not what you meant I can fill the silences with perfect words. She stayed until the Sunday and only went home then because her Mother found out where she was and sent the police after her. My parents weren’t particularly religious, but a girl my class told me that if I misbehaved Jesus would know, and said it with such conviction that it had to be true. Except by trying not to wonder, I’m wondering without allowing conclusion. It’s easier that way. But it means these thoughts can’t be filed away just yet, until a conclusion is allowed to complete them. The conclusion hurts. Knowing it will hurt is a conclusion in itself. To be honest I wasn’t that bothered about those things and seemed more interested in cartoons. Don’t cut off your face to spite someone else’s face.

Verse 6 – Untitled – (Loren)

A small purple ant, crawling from beneath your lower eyelid. A seedy looking as he sounded, gaunt and unhealthy looking but wearing what appeared to be expensive clothes. I explained what I wanted and he laughed. I’ve just the thing,” he said, withdrawing a small packet from his inside jacket pocket “this is a new drug, it’s called “Bot Mot”. The effects are a bit like speed and a bit like LSD it makes your brain process stuff faster and make new connections. My glittering friend was a restless one and didn’t stay in the same place from one night to the next. Why this alien/nation, do you really want to live in space, are you tired of the human race and are you sick of seeing my face? “You’re weird and you’re short, and yer Mam tells me you’re gay, but I knew your Da, and he was witty and so are you, you’re alright you a love, you are. Weird hair.” I am. I concentrate again on your breathing. A larger ant, its exterior a whitened pearl , finds its way out from within your nose and laughs hysterically at your face, which is now sporting no features but a large vertical slit down its middle. From the slit oozes a thick, green makeshift smoothie of numbers and matters. Don’t cut off your face. Open wide your meagre eager throat and let it slip inside. I opened, I beamed, I fed from a stranger whose touch was so intimately tender. I tried to catch what that smell provoked inside me. I wondered how and where it touches me. Missing what should come naturally, trying too hard to be aware. Trying to reconnect, re-balance my consciousness and my senses. We breath in waves. To allow our breaths to share the same space, to allow our fingers to touch without purpose, to allow ourselves to be warmed by the others body heat, to allow ourselves to feel the comfort of the touch of a finger tip, a breath, the movement of a foot, to feel each others heart beat. Every two steps I took I stopped to read something. The only way to better a society is to base things on what we, as individuals, truly believe, and not, contrary to instinct, what we are told to believe. Only by doing this, will we achieve honesty of opinion necessary for the real development in society. Challenge what you think and why. We can do all of this while we pretend to be asleep, I want you to think about love as if it never came. Space and silence. Silence and space. Alone again. Now when I look up and see my old friend, I know he was never my friend, he was just a dying planet, far, far away.

Verse 7 – Untitled – (Stef)

If worms merely rot flesh and suck senses then they have no power over me. Only my mortality melts as I decompose in no man’s land. For I have escaped all knowing eyes and tongues set in the mortar of high rise cages and flown north north east over enlightened short skirts across a crowded room. I turned to look at you. Our eyes lock, and in that very moment, I look so far into you, I see every memory of us flash through our eyes. And then it stops, Ice in my glass melts, I swear I felt something more than rum on my tongue; wrong. Sing, let the lies begin, imaginary memories to draw me in, drown my disappointment, you can’t see through another man’s eyelids. Yo yo back to me, I’ll breath you in. Through every pour, into every cell. Deep within. The sunlight is sucked from this existence, to another place where I’m not. This is our bed;where your light doesn’t have any open slats to squeeze through, and honestly I couldn’t change me for the world. Hurtling faster all around her heavy chunks of brick, they’ll crush your little glass heart if you don’t flinch or act quick. The ocean calls its song, deadly to the foolish, tender for the brave, who drown in the green allure of your kiss. A beautiful fluency in your secrets, a lake to drown, the great oak falls with no one around. I try to lick my lips, my tongue is dry and swollen. Confusion reigns only for a second longer while I pull all the evidence I have together to form a jigsaw of memories, a tale of last night. The moon always looked a tad jealous of my star. Never shared the same space of night sky. I would have to sleep at some point though my dreams would be open to interpretation.

Verse 8 – Untitled – (Loren)

I spread them out on the floor in front of me and scanned my eyes over Medusas as they lay before me like a carpet. Check yourself, you might have no business sleeping with virgins. I’ve run out of reasons to turn back, the time is right now, this dark night takes hold, tears strike the floor, why do my dreams feel like a war? Sacrifice your dreams to your sanctuary, your place within I’ve become your enemy, I feel your heart beating. I try to count the beats and read some message in them. I’m sure its harder and faster than it usually is. Are you scared? I am. Its OK. You’ll be OK. So will I. I have fought mutation by freezing maggots beneath the desert on the outskirts of sanity. The love she had for me was taken for granted She moves so gracefully and bleeds just like me. Within hours I knew all the plants of the earth, the secrets of the stars and every murderer that Hercule Poirot would ever reveal.

– END –

PS (The fight for sexual equality is not between men and women, it’s between people and dickheads.)